Welcome to the inspirational living podcast.

Today's podcast has been edited and adapted from How to Develop Your Willpower by Claire Tree Major, published in 1920.

The most destructive force in the world is fear. Almost all failure and almost all crime can be traced to one form or another

of this most prevalent evil. Fear is the father of doubt, and doubt is the murderer of success.

It shows itself in many forms, from the physical fear which is part of our animal inheritance,

to the more subtle and dangerous forms which attack our mental life and sap our strength

at its very foundation.

Mental fear is more treacherous because it often close itself in fair disguises.

As prudence or caution or the normal instinct of self-preservation, it masquerades so successfully

that one often deceives oneself. Prudence and caution and the instinct for self-preservation are necessary

and useful if they are inspired by reason and not by fear. For fear cripples and destroys,

it does not help. Fear has absolutely no place in human life and development. It is an entirely

extraneous and harmful emotion. It is born of an exaggeration, by the imagination, of the power

of other things or conditions, until we believe it to be superior to our own power.

It is an entirely false and misleading attitude of mind.

At the moment of crisis, when our need is the greatest, it betrays us to the very danger

we fear by robbing us of the very qualities of mind which

we need to overcome it.

Fear destroys mental balance.

Under the influence of fear you cannot perceive clearly, imagine truly, reason logically,

nor act usefully.

The only thing in the world worth fearing is fear.

...